Let's Decide It by Skill.
"Let's decide it by skill."
The staff blinked wide-eyed at the man's out-of-nowhere remark.
It was the morning after Snicky's call-up request had landed. Wondering what had gotten into Baku that he'd bring a wrestler into the conference room of all places, they'd discovered the answer was talk this vague — like trying to grab clouds out of the air.
Gathered there now were the team leads of every department — the costume team, the booking team, the props team, the broadcast team, the management team — and beyond them, seasoned veterans from any number of other desks besides.
Yet of everyone present, the only one who truly understood what Junho meant was Harley Racy, a superstar in his day.
Skill.
It was such a slippery question that even men who'd spent their whole lives in the business would hand back a different answer apiece.
In any ordinary sport, it would have been simple: the player who scored the most goals, the one who anchored the team, the one who excelled on defense. Pro wrestling was not so kind.
A wrestler with great in-ring work? No — "match quality" was itself a fiction, a concept never quite pinned down. Great mic-work? That alone couldn't deliver the "sport" the crowd had come to see. Charisma? The very thing that tested charisma was pro wrestling's "show." Self-sacrifice? Take a bad injury chasing it, and all that devotion cooled into stone porridge — you were left flat broke and finished.
In the end, the answers numbered in the hundreds, and nobody could know the right one until the box was opened. That was what "skill" meant in pro wrestling — nothing more or less than the ability to draw a good hand at poker.
But Harley Racy, who had spent decades talking to crowds from inside the ring, understood something the rest of the room did not. A pro wrestler's true skill revealed itself through one thing and one thing only.
Popularity.
The talent to show everything a short match could hold, to send a crowd into rapture — or draw its jeers — with a single word. Every last bit of it was judged by nothing save the response of the watching audience.
Which meant that Junho's proposal from moments ago — let's pick them by skill — was...
What on earth is that supposed to be?
Harley tilted his head. To see that skill, someone would have to open the chocolate box first. And once they did, the credibility of "let's pick them by skill" was bound to crumble one way or another.
After a moment's thought, Harley clamped his favorite cigar between his teeth and spoke.
"A wrestler who's done nothing but lose wakes up one day to find the crowd reacting to him — and becomes a superstar..."
Everyone listened intently to his words.
"It's not an unheard-of story. Some would call it a fluke. Some would call it skill."
"It's skill."
"Then tell me, kid — how exactly are those of us starting from rock bottom this very week supposed to know which is which?"
They had to put a live pro wrestling show on the air as soon as next week. In other words, there would be no time to be tested by an audience.
"You're not telling me we wing the first week on gut feeling alone, are you?"
It was true that Baku had grown fond of that Asian kid of late. But Harley had absolutely no intention of indulging it.
Junho was, to be fair, a capable hand. He cooperated well and carried not one bad habit in the ring. He'd shown a fine instinct for a feud, too, and he didn't slack on his work — the body he'd rebuilt since joining GCW proved as much. All the same, rules were rules. Honestly speaking, Harley kept a wary eye on a rookie who aired his opinions while riding on Baku's protection.
"Of course not."
"Then what exactly are you proposing?"
"Something simple."
Junho smiled.
"Every match ends in a draw."
"......?"
"What?"
"What in the..."
At that, the department heads shut their mouths one and all, dumbfounded.
A draw.
Would that actually work?
Soon enough, every face in the room wore the same look. They found Junho's idea intriguing.
GCW held three championships in all: two for the men's division and one for the women's. First came the GCW Tag Team Championship, contested by pairs of wrestlers; second, the GCW Women's Championship, fought over by the women's roster; and last, the GCW Championship — the belt belonging to the men now on the chopping block.
Every one of those belts was a wrestler's ultimate dream, in storylines and in stark reality alike. And that was precisely why the idea worked.
A scenario in which the roster bled for the GCW Championship — the belt that marked a promotion's flagship star — would prove the title's worth even as it sent the audience's expectations soaring.
Not bad.
Harley turned the cigar over in his fingers. A complete reversal of the problem — and yet a colossal gamble. If the crowd took no interest, if the local station's viewers tuned out, it would amount to checkmating himself. He could already hear the sneers: what kind of fool stunt is this?
Even so, Harley Racy liked the audacity of it — so much that his old poker habit came scratching at the door. Because he happened to hold the grounds to make such a gamble pay.
Reporters at the local paper. Friends at the broadcasting station. GCW had its ways.
Baku turned at once to the head of the management team seated beside him.
"...How many of our boys can we run in singles right now?"
"About twenty."
"Throw in that brat over there and the Hart Family kid, and make it sixteen. We'll book it at eight matches."
He ran the numbers in his head. GCW's broadcast slot ran an hour and thirty minutes; shave ten off for the opening, and that left roughly ten minutes a match.
"That seems a bit short."
No sooner had the objection gone up than the booking team leader beside the speaker pulled a puzzled face. "If every match ends in a draw, you'll get double knockouts — I worry it'd give folks the impression our wrestlers are fragile."
"Hmm."
"Um..."
Just then, Junho raised his hand. Every eye in the room turned to him, full of expectation now.
"Let's run one match as a dark match."
"What? A dark match? You mean keep it off the broadcast?"
"Yes. At the seventh match, we play it so the clock runs out and the broadcast cuts off. Then only six matches ever need to air."
"That would mean..."
"Thirteen minutes a match."
The head of the finance team, quick with figures, had the answer out in a heartbeat.
Even so, it was still a touch short. Just as Harley sank back into thought, Junho pressed on like a bolt of lightning.
"And I'd like my match placed second. Three minutes is plenty for it."
"...What?"
"Russell comes out during the opening interview, and I ambush him. Then, during my match, Russell runs in and tears the thing apart. That way, Russell's match and my own fall off the card naturally — two more out of six, and four remain."
"You're telling me you can guarantee twenty minutes a match."
Harley laughed, half in disbelief. A few flicks of that glib tongue and four matches had vanished on the spot — the touch of a man who might have promoted for thirty years.
"Yes. We fill those four with the best workers on the roster and slot the most popular stars last. All that's left, then..."
"...is making the crowd and the viewers desperate for next week."
"Using the papers and the station?"
"Yes. That's the extent of my idea, for now."
"Hmph..."
Harley lit the cigar.
While he puffed until the smoke curled upward, the seated team leads sank into deliberations of their own, sorting through what they'd heard. Harley studied their faces one by one.
Baku first. The man who'd brought the idea's author in — it went without saying that he looked ready to back Junho to the hilt.
And the rest...
Damn it.
Harley Racy smiled a sour smile. Most everyone who took a job around pro wrestling walked through the door carrying a dream of the business, and Junho's idea seemed to have reached inside every last one of them and squeezed the closet nerd awake.
Having roughed out the work ahead in his head, Harley spoke.
"...It's gonna be one hell of a schedule."
"But it'll be fun, won't it?"
"That's exactly the problem."
Chuckling, Harley pointed at Junho, who stood tall and unbowed.
"First things first — get the rookies packaged."
They weren't yet ready to be put on display as product.
Having heard my presentation(?), Baku delivered his verdict as follows:
"Perfect."
Grinning from ear to ear, he hammered my back once and disappeared along with the booking team leader — off, presumably, to tell the wrestlers what this meeting had decided.
But I didn't follow. I stayed standing in the conference room and waited, because as Harley had said, I needed to be made ready.
Before long, a bespectacled Black man came walking over and struck up a conversation in a mild voice. He was the head of the costume team.
"You heard all that, Jun?"
"Yes. Do we start with the gear?"
"That's the order of business. Follow me."
The team leader turned and headed out. I fell in step behind him, bound for a part of the building I'd never once set foot in. On the way, perhaps to signal a little goodwill, he doled out a few compliments.
"I had a look at your gear and your gimmick the other day. Sharp stuff."
"Well, I did my best to put my own spin on what I learned working the indies."
"Honestly, that's harder to pull off than it sounds. Maybe it's the sheer scale of an outfit like the WWF, but the indie guys who come through that door all seem to lose their individuality the moment they sign."
He smiled ruefully.
"In that spirit, yours should be a fun one to build. ...Though picking a fabric that stretches without ripping will be a proper headache."
"I'll leave it in your hands."
I offered my thanks with real feeling behind them — long years as a wrestler had taught me to understand a man like him.
The centerpiece of my wrestling gear was, of course, the jeans. Cut so they wouldn't tear or bind through even the flashiest maneuvers, and custom-built with the individual wrestler's style in mind — that was WWF wrestling gear.
The costume team leader ushered me into the costume shop, still talking as he went.
"I've got one idea to start with."
"What is it?"
"We rip out the knee sections. Your finisher's the knee strike, right? We'd build the look around that."
"Hmm..."
I turned it over in my mind. By today's standards, it wouldn't read as too dated, would it?
"Better to leave questions of style to the expert."
"Do you take any moves that land you on your knees?"
"No — I don't believe so." I shook my head.
"That's a relief. If you did, the ripped-knee idea would've been dead on arrival."
If a wrestler's repertoire kept his knees crashing into the canvas, he'd need pads over them to protect his livelihood. Knees, elbows, shoulders, back, neck — a long career demanded cunning about every one of them.
At his desk, the team leader set pencil to paper at once. A man built much like me took shape under his hand, dressed in jeans and a tank top.
"Tear the knees right here... and shall we take the coloring a shade darker?"
"Let's. I am a heel — the villain — after all."
"So that's why you built the gimmick without the glitz on purpose?"
"That's part of it."
"You've got a real eye for this. Most greenhorns never think that far."
The team leader smiled. With fifteen years of experience distilled into me, I was hardly a greenhorn — but I accepted the compliment all the same.
The easy chatter drew the rest of the costume staff over from their desks. And to my surprise, they knew exactly who I was.
"Oh — Kim, right?"
"Yes, that's me."
"We watched your match footage. Working top-rope offense against Russell Hart — now that was impressive."
"I-I'll keep working hard."
I felt heat creep into my cheeks.
In my past life, if I remember right, all I got was a pair of plain black trunks.
And now here were people taking an interest in me, pitching in together, eager to polish me into something worth watching. This was what acting with confidence in myself had bought me.
"Oh, that reminds me." Something had evidently pricked the team leader's curiosity, and he glanced back at me. "I've heard talk of your ring name — what was it again?"
"Ah, that."
I smiled a wry smile. Truth be told, the thing that had taken the longest to settle had been my ring name — a wrestler's name that would lay me bare and stick in the memory all at once.
And it was...